new development

I really like all the new content, my only concern is that right now Ivan is three separate games with the same beginning. Basically you go through the first quest, and then choose one of three different quests and then that's it. It would be cool if it could be more open world-ey somehow, or if the other 2 quest lines remained open or became part of the quest line for whichever of the three you choose. Not sure if that possible, Just my $0.02. **

**To be fair I have no input in how to make that actually happen, this is just my opinion.

Well, it would be easy to keep the other quests open rather than lock you out, but the locking out is done for balance purposes. There's a limited amount of gear you can find in each of the quests, but if you had access to all three, the scrolls of enchantment etc. would add up.

I think that was one of the problems with CLIVAN, where you had mutiple new areas full of loot, all freely accessible, and you were severely overpowered in the end game. I won CLIVAN with all gear made of valpurium or GEF, enchanted to +6 at the least, stats through the roof and unlike vanilla IVAN, it wasn't hard or lucky to get to that point. I just had to explore everywhere.

If you'd like to add input for development, we do have the development + suggestions and ideas sections. I recommend reading the three sticky topics in development as a starting point.

Insofar as dungeon locking is concerned, it was primarily due to one SquashMonster's post where he points out adding length to the game throws out the difficulty curve.

We could theoretically have an option for an all-dungeons-open, no-highscore game, though.

Another option is simply to make loot drops - especially good loot drops - more rare.

I think this is an issue in the game as is. I feel like the addition of all the new materials (which are cool by the way) leads to a lot of high powered gear earlier in the game than in past versions. Could be observer bias though since I only play like 4 games a year currently.

I feel like the opposite re: loot drops actually, there are some artifacts that I just never ever see anymore. Can’t remember the last game I’ve found a Saal’thul in.

So the abundance of cool items has reduced the chance of finding the one you want, and the inability to wish for artifacts has made choosing your play style more difficult.

e.g. I used to start with spears in UT knowing that I had a good chance of getting at least 1 wish later in game where I could get Mjolak if I didn’t find it randomly earlier.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it forces me to try different tactics and play styles. But it definitely feels different

It does make the game a bit more random. Maybe you get lucky in UT and land a powerful artifact that carries you through the end-game. Maybe you find Turox on GC3 after maining with spears until that point.

Random can be fun, or not. It really depends. I wonder if we have access to some other roguelikes' development documents and can see how this sort of thing was handled for e.g. ADOM, which has had *a lot* of intermediate content plugged in over time.